


The Bumblebee

by Higgles123



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluffy, alfie as a dad is too much for my heart to handle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25492654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgles123/pseuds/Higgles123
Summary: Alfie's youngest daughter gets stung by a bumblebee and then chaos ensues
Relationships: Alfie Solomons/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 39





	The Bumblebee

It was a beautiful day in Camden. Cotton wool clouds were dotted about the clear blue sky, and Alfie smiled contentedly as he listened to the girls playing in the paddling pool while the warm sunshine beat down upon his face. Beside him, Ava sat underneath the shade of the huge parasol that Alfie had erected to keep Jacob out of the shade while Ava fed him. She hissed slightly when the baby nipped at her with his sharp bottom teeth that had come through only a few days before.

“He hurtin’ you love?” Alfie turned to look at her, his brows furrowed in concern.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” she answered with a playful small, brushing Jacob’s hair back from his sweaty forehead as he suckled at her breast hungrily.

“Stop bitin’ your mum’s tits you little bugger,” Alfie leant over and stroked his son’s cheek tenderly. “That’s my job.”

“Alfie!” Ava exclaimed, motioning to the children at the other end of the garden.

“Oh they can’t bloody hear us over all that racket they’re makin’,” Alfie scoffed.

“They can’t no, but this one here can.”

“Yeah and he’s seven months old and only just about able to sit up on his own,” Alfie tutted. “He won’t be sayin’ nothin’ will you, my little monster?”

Jacob hummed happily as he clutched at Ava’s chest, pinching and digging in with nails that, despite being cut after his bath every evening, still managed to be like little weapons. He always did this when he was growing tired; as though it was a way of keeping himself awake but both Ava and Alfie knew it would be only minutes until he was fast asleep halfway through finishing his meal.

“Once he’s gone down why don’t you put him in his cot and come back here for a cuddle,” Alfie suggested. “Never get to cuddle you anymore without one of these little tyrants pushin’ their way in.”

“You get to cuddle me plenty,” Ava rolled her eyes, kissing the top of Jacob’s head as his eyes fluttered closed and stayed that way. “How do you think we have so many children?”

“Humour me, yeah?” Alfie grinned. “You can hold my hand and we’ll pretend we’re on our honeymoon again in Margate.”

“Such an old romantic, Mr Solomons,” Ava smiled down at him as she rose from her seat.

“Yeah well that’s your fault aint it,” he grumbled.

Ava disappeared, her jasmine scent wafting up Alfie’s nose as she passed by him and he closed his eyes for a moment. He loved listening to the girls playing; the things that came out of their mouths when they thought they couldn’t be heard were both amusing and sometimes also alarming. It reminded Alfie that children always knew more than adults gave them credit for, but he wished that his girls would retain some of that childish innocence for a lot longer than he ever had. A sudden scream made him open his eyes in alarm and when he saw his little Soraya sunshine on the grass crying her eyes out, he darted over there as quick as a flash, barely registering the pain from his dodgy hip.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he knelt down beside her while Hannah and Raisa climbed out of the pool to see what was going on.

“Daddy!” Soraya wailed pitifully, flinging her arms around Alfie for dear life. “My foot!”

“What about your foot, darlin’?” Alfie held her against him for a moment and then pulled back to look at her. “Did you fall over?”

“She always falls over,” Raisa commented.

“Not always,” Hannah said. “She just falls sometimes but that’s cos she’s more littler than me or you.”

“She’s only a bit littler than you but she’s a lot littler than me,” Raisa muttered.

“Raisa, hush up,” Alfie snapped gently. “Soraya, love, you’ve gotta tell me what you’ve done or I won’t know how to make it better, will I?”

“I don’t know,” Soraya sobbed. “I got out the pool cos I need a drink and when I stepped on the grass I got a really bad ouchy in my foot.”

“Alright poppet,” Alfie patted her cheek. “Let Daddy have a look.”

Soraya continued to cry as Alfie gently lifted her foot to find out what had hurt her so much, but it was the small bumblebee corpse on the grass that he noticed first. A quick look at the sole of Soraya’s foot confirmed that she had indeed been stung.

“Daddy, there’s a bee!” Raisa screeched, running back into the pool as quickly as she could.

“A bee!” Soraya and Hannah cried simultaneously.

“Take it away, Daddy quickly!” Raisa demanded. “Hannah run away before it stings you.”

“It won’t be stingin’ anyone,” Alfie rolled his eyes at the dramatics of his girls. “It’s dead.”

“So it won’t sting me?” Hannah clarified.

“No,” Alfie assured her. “Now why don’t you go back in the pool with Raisa while I get this sting out of your sister’s foot?”

“You just said the bee wasn’t going to sting anyone,” Raisa frowned.

“Well it won’t now cos it’s already stung Soraya,” he explained patiently.

“It stinged me?” Soraya burst into tears again. “Am I gonna die?”

“Ssh, it’s alright little one,” Alfie kissed her nose. “You most certainly aint gonna die, but we just need to pull the sting out and then you’ll be able to walk again no problem.”

“Will it hurt?” Soraya was hesitant to go ahead with the extraction.

“Nah,” Alfie smiled. “You won’t even feel it, and for bein’ so brave I’ll even go and get you an ice cream out the freezer.”

“Ok,” Soraya nodded, deciding that not only did she trust her father implicitly but that the lure of ice cream was much too hard to resist.

“Good girl,” Alfie winked. “Alright, now you close your eyes and count to five and then I’ll take it out.”

Soraya squeezed her eyes tightly shut and began to count in a shaky voice. Before she’d made it to three, Alfie had pulled out the sting and she hadn’t even felt a thing.

“All done, my little Soraya sunshine,” he announced and her eyes opened in surprise.

“I didn’t feel anything,” she beamed.

“Course you didn’t,” Alfie ruffled her hair. “Daddy would never lie to you, would I?”

“Apart from when you say silly things like if we eat more than two biscuits our teeth will fall out, or that if we don’t our veggies then we won’t grown big and strong,” Raisa interceded, earning her a disapproving frown from her father.

“Daddy, if the bumblebee was already dead then how did it manage to sting Soraya’s foot?” Hannah asked.

“Well, it most likely died _because_ it stung Soraya on the foot. Once a bee loses it sting, it dies and I should think if a foot landed on it, it probably stung in self defence.”

“Hmm,” Hannah absorbed that thought. “So basically what you’re saying is that Soraya killed the bee?”

“Well no,” Alfie shook his head. “Not on purpose anyway.”

“Soraya!” Raisa gasped in horror. “You killed the bee. Mrs Long at school says that all creatures belong to God and should be looked after, even yucky insects and things. You’re a bee killer. Animal murderer! Killer! Killer! Soraya is a bee killer!”

“It probably had baby bumblebees and a wife bumblebee, Soraya, and you killed it,” Hannah shook her head in disgust. “Raisa’s right, you _are_ a murderer.”

“Down with the bee killer! Down with the bee killer!” Raisa continued to chant and soon enough Hannah joined in.

“Right that’s enough girls,” Alfie sighed, picking Soraya up and holding her against his chest as she cried her eyes out.

“Soraya is a murderer! Soraya is a bee killer!”

“Just what in the bloody hell is going on out here?!”

Everyone stopped and stayed exactly where they were. It was very very rare that Ava ever raised her voice, but when she did the girls knew that it was serious.

“Well, I’m waiting?” Ava put her hand on her hip. “Alfie?”

“Soraya got stung by a bee but I’ve got the sting out,” he explained and Ava immediately rushed over and took Soraya from his arms.

“Oh my darling,” she cooed. “My poor poor girl.”

“It really hurt, Mummy,” Soraya wept. “And then Daddy told me I killed the bee when I stood on it and then Hannah and Raisa were calling me a murderer and now I feel bad because I didn’t mean to kill the bee and I didn’t want him to sting me and this day is the worst day of my life now.”

Ava shot Alfie a scowl as Soraya ranted almost incoherently, getting herself even more in an upset state.

“Why would you tell her she killed the bee?”

“I didn’t,” Alfie spluttered. “Not directly anyway. I just said that bees die once they lose their sting and it lost its sting inside Soraya’s foot. It’s these other two hooligans here who decided to start callin’ their sister a bloody bug murderer.”

“Bee killer is that we said,” Raisa muttered before quickly looking down at the floor to avoid her mother’s angry stare.

“Raisa and Hannah Solomons, I’m very disappointed at the pair of you,” Ava spoke firmly. “Both of you can go in at once and get dried, then you can spend the rest of the afternoon in your bedroom thinking about why it wasn’t alright to be so awful to your little sister.”

“But-“

“-No buts,” Ava snapped. “If I hear another word out of either of your mouths that isn’t ‘sorry Soraya’ then you won’t be going to Caleb’s birthday party on Wednesday.”

“Sorry Soraya,” the two girls murmured sullenly as they climbed out of the pool and walked back into the house, Hannah daring to glance back quickly at her mother apologetically.

“Now poppet,” Ava turned her attention back to Soraya. “You mustn’t be upset about the bumblebee sweetheart.”

“But I killed it, Mummy.”

“It was an accident darling.”

“What if someone tells the police and they put me in jail?” Soraya asked, genuine fear in her eyes.

“Oh my sweetheart,” Ava smiled. “I promised you that won’t happen. People don’t go to jail for dead bumblebees, and even if they did you never would and do you know why? Because you didn’t want the bumblebee to die and nobody could ever be mad at you for a simple accident, alright?”

“I think so,” she nodded. “Do you think we can give the bumblebee a funeral like when Hannah’s hamster went to heaven?”

An amused glance passed between Ava and Alfie, who promptly had to turn away and pretend to cough to cover up his chuckle. Ava luckily was able to remain straight faced.

“Of course we can darling,” she smiled, setting Soraya down on her feet. “Why don’t you go in and get yourself dried while me and Daddy find something to bury Mr Bumblebee in?”

“Ok,” Soraya agreed. “Oh and maybe we can bury my brown bear with the bee so he doesn’t get scared in the ground.”

“That’s a lovely idea, Soraya.”

As the somewhat placated girl ran off into the house, Ava let out a sigh and slapped her husband playfully on the arm.

“I can’t believe you laughed,” she chided as she let out a giggle of her own. “What on earth are we going to do with these girls?”

“I was thinkin’ we could sell them but I reckon after a day or two of peace and quiet, I’d actually quite miss the little buggers.”

“Yeah me too,” Ava agreed, nestling against Alfie’s chest as his arms wrapped themselves around her tightly.

From the open bedroom window, they could suddenly hear Hannah and Raisa arguing over a hair ribbon followed by the sound of Jacob crying from his bedroom as his older sisters managed to wake him up.

“Never bloody ends, does it?” Alfie muttered.

“Never,” Ava smirked.

“Wouldn’t change it for the fuckin’ world though. None of it. Not you, not them, the screamin’, the fightin’ and everythin’ else in between,” he kissed Ava’s forehead just as another scream sounded from the girls’ room. “Well, perhaps I would just for a few hours.”


End file.
